UNITED STATES: California court attacks parental rights

News Weekly, March 29, 2008

A California judge has ruled that parents who home-school their children without a teacher's certificate could be criminally prosecuted.

A recent California court decision which severely restricts parents' rights to home-school their children has been condemned by both the state's Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and pro-family activists across the United States.

California Appeals Court Judge H. Walt Croskey has ruled that parents who home-school their children without a teacher's certificate could be criminally prosecuted.

Governor Schwarzenegger, who is generally left-liberal on social issues, denounced the decision, promising: "This outrageous ruling must be overturned and if the courts don't protect parents' rights then, as elected officials, we will."

World Congress of Families founder, Allan Carlson, described the court ruling as "blatantly anti-family".

"It's an attempt to cut off escape routes to families fleeing the public education system," Carlson said.

"This had nothing to do with the quality of home-schooling. Home-school graduates tend to score higher on aptitude tests than products of public education. Students schooled at home frequently attend the best Ivy League colleges and universities.

"Judge Croskey doesn't want children to miss out on all of the wonderful indoctrination that has become an integral part of public education, like National Day of Silence, where students are compelled to affirm the homosexual lifestyle," Carlson remarked.

Carlson said the ruling "shows just how far some judges will go to strip parents on any rights over their children's education".

In 2005, the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco, held that schools could provide students with any sexual information or instruction they chose, and parents had no right to object.

"Now, another California court is trying to take more rights from families," Carlson declared. "This horrendous decision must be reversed."